 |
| Teresa's Baptism |
What a week
Teresa's baptism was one of the most spiritual and special baptismal services of my life. I had the privilege of performing the ordinance and when she came up out of the water, she just started bawling tears of joy. She had made some very large changes in her life to finally make her first covenant with the God that will bless her family for eternities. After the ordinance, all of the people present took turns to share their conversion story or how they found the church and the Spirit was tangible. There is a mother who got reactivated recently and her three adult daughters were recently baptized and all of them were there. The mother shared how she was alone in her faith as a teenager and for that reason fell away from the church. However, now she has her family in the Gospel. Now she has hope. Covenants are hope. Let's just say that there was not a dry eye in that room.
It was Elder Dávila's birthday on Sunday. We ate tres leches cake and had a jolly time.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, we had multizone conferences and I got to see the whole mission which was super cool. Elder Porter, Elder Evanson, and I whipped out a musical number with like 8 minutes of practice before the conference started and it went well so that was fun. I had the opportunity to make a presentation/training for this conference and I spoke about having confidence in our covenants. If there is one thing I learned while studying for this presentation, it is that the Lord keeps his promises. There are countless examples in the scriptures and personal experiences that I have had but I just want to testify that He knows you and he will not forget you, in fact, He remembers you. He will keep his promises.
On Thursday morning, we hopped in President McClellan's car for a 2 day road trip out to Santa Rosa to do interviews and trainings for the missionaries way out there. The weather in Santa Rosa is identical to that of San Diego in California and I immediately fell in love. I took every chance to be outside in the cool breeze. It was also so awesome getting to spend so much time talking with President and to hear his stories and his insights. We got stuck in 6 hours of traffic on the way home yesterday so we had a lottt of time to talk (some good LLC ifykyk). One thing that touched me in his many stories was the confidence he has in the promptings of the Spirit. It made me think of how it can be possible to be so confident in the whisperings of the Spirit-- no matter how unconventional they may be-- and I came to the conclusion that it comes from confidence in worthiness. This confidence comes from obedience. I love the real simplicity of the gospel formula.
It has been a great week and I feel like I am learning a lot. Charity is so important. I pray to be more grateful and I hope to be a little more like Christ each day. I love being a missionary and working full-time for the Lord.
With much love,
Élder Snyder
No comments:
Post a Comment